Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Fields, Cilek, Shaw Win In Iowa City

Patti leads the Fields for Iowa City school board and hopefully is the first of two Bears fans to win this year. Fields gets re-elected with 77 percent, Toni Cilek takes a third term with 73 and new candidate Michael Shaw was not far behind at 67.

Richard Tiegs was well back at 32 percent, but ran third and over 50 percent in his Coralville base, ahead of Shaw. (The mathematical paradox happened in Coralville: four candidates, vote for three, everyone had support from more than 50 percent of voters). That's the only micro-trend that stands out. Otherwise the patterns were similar: Fields first everywhere except Hills (the smallest precinct by far in school elections), with Cilek and Shaw swapping second and third and Tiegs way back.

The emailed endorsements (that I got anyway) varied between Fields-Shaw and Fields-Shaw-Cilek,

The interesting race was Clear Creek Amana where a write-in campaign popped up late. The two districts merged legally back in 1994 (my father in law Bob Steele was the superintendent the two districts shared back in that era) but they haven't quite merged electorally. The results always break down on Clear Creek vs. Amana lines. The Clear Creek folks can usually get about an 80 percent vote for their people, but Amana results tend to look like they come out of one of the more reliable precincts in Pyongyang (98 percent and 97 percent tonight, I've seen 99). The incumbent, Amana, on the ballot side (in an unusual alliance with Oxford, usually they go opposite directions) beat the Tiffin/Cosgrove, challenger, write-in side this time. What was it Tip O'Neill said?